Belgian Hassidic school expels Natorei Karta sons

A Belgian court last week ordered Natorei Karta leader Aryeh Friedman’s two sons
expelled from the all-girls Banot Yerushalayim school in which they were
studying, according to haredi news website Kikar Hashabbat.

The boys were
not accepted to any other Jewish schools in Antwerp due to their father’s
leadership role within the Natorei Karta organization.

The children were
only allowed to enroll in the girls’ school after a previous case in which a
court had ordered the school to take the boys due to a law that publicly funded
institutions may not discriminate on the basis of gender.

Natorei Karta
is an extreme, anti-Zionist offshoot of the Satmar hassidic sect and is known
for its ties to Iran and the PLO. Friedman is considered persona non-grata, even
among members of communities adamantly opposed to Zionism, due to his attendance
at a Holocaust denial conference in Tehran in 2006, at which he hugged Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Friedman moved to Antwerp from New York in
2011 due to his inability to find a school that would accept his children
there.

After being unable to find a school in Belgium to enroll them, he
successfully sued the Banot Yerushalayim school, which is affiliated with the
Belz hassidic sect.

Friedman declared that in having his sons enrolled in
a girl’s only school, he was striking a blow for gender equality in the hassidic
world, reported the haredi news website Vos Iz Neias (What’s News).

He
subsequently went to court to compel a Belz-affiliated all-male yeshiva to
accept his three daughters, the Yeshiva World News reported.

According to
several haredi news outlets, rabbis in New York issued a document “warning
Orthodox Jews around the world to avoid interacting with Friedman in any way” in
January.

In line with the worldwide haredi boycott of Friedman, the Belz
community in Antwerp vowed to fight the court decision and won a temporary
ruling last week.

While Friedman’s boys are no longer in the school, the
decision will need to be ratified by the court in a future hearing.

Malka
Friedman, the boys’ grandmother, has filed a custody suit against her son.